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The official PlayStation Blog for news and video updates on PS3, PS4, PSN, PS Vita, PSPSun, 02 Aug 2015 16:48:56 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Bound by Flame Out This Week on PS4, PS3http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/05/05/bound-by-flame-out-this-week-on-ps4-ps3/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/05/05/bound-by-flame-out-this-week-on-ps4-ps3/#commentsMon, 05 May 2014 16:04:30 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=131840Bound by Flame launches this week on PS4 and PS3. It arrives on PlayStation Store first on May 6th, and then hits retail shelves on May 9th.]]>Hi PlayStation.Blog readers, this is Walid, producer from Spiders. Bound by Flame launches this week on PS4 and PS3. It arrives on PlayStation Store first on May 6th, and then hits retail shelves on May 9th.

To celebrate the coming launch, we’re delighted to share the launch trailer. Enjoy!

Bound by Flame is our latest RPG, set in a dark fantasy universe where seven Icelords have taken over. Vertiel is enslaved and locked in an endless winter as the Icelords drain the world’s energy.

You play Vulcan, part of a group of mercenaries called the Pure Blades. You’ve been hired to protect a group of priests while they cast a desperate spell to help them in their fight against the Icelords. Something goes wrong with the spell and you end up possessed by a Flame Demon. This is where your journey begins.

Throughout your adventure, you’ll face choices that impact your relationship with your inner demon. Will you let him possess you and define your behavior, or will you defy him and dominate his will? This is a matter of choice.

Your relationship with the demon not only influences the storyline of Bound by Flame, but it also influences the game and how you play it. Taking advantage of the demon’s power will allow you to turn into a powerful pyromancer, granting you higher mana regen and powerful fire spells. Staying faithful to your human nature will encourage the development of heroic abilities, letting you become a fearless fighter or sneaky ranger.

Your journey will also be full of encounters that enlarge your group of companions and your relationship with them will be influenced by your inner fight with the demon. You may make friends or even romance them, but some will turn their back on you if your behavior goes against their ethics.

One of the features we’re particularly proud of is the crafting system. At Spiders, we love to customize every single part of our equipment when we’re playing RPGs, and this is a feature we really wanted to implement in Bound by Flame.

Based on the ingredients you loot from fallen foes or find hidden around the world of Vertiel, you’ll be able to craft and customize new pieces of equipment that influence and enhance your fighting style. Try different options on the monstrous creatures of Vertiel and see which one you like best! We’ve made those monsters particularly aggressive, so think wisely before charging into battle. Some enemies are huge and powerful, but others are sneaky and will try to surprise you with their techniques.

I think that covers it. It’s been a long road and we’re very happy we made it this far. It’s an honor to bring one of the first RPGs to PS4. Thank you once again for your support. It’s given us great motivation and pushed us to overcome our limitations. We hope you’ll love the game as much as we loved making it!

And don’t hesitate to visit the Spiders Devblog for more info. I’ll stop by sometime to answer comments, so if you have any questions, just ask!

Hi PlayStation.Blog readers! This is Walid, producer at Spiders Studios. With the upcoming launch of Bound by Flame — our latest game and our first RPG for PS4 — we decided to tease you a little more with our combat system, via an extensive combat trailer explaining its mechanics. Enjoy!

Bound by Flame features real-time combat that’s tactically deep, dynamic, and spectacular. Defeating your enemies won’t be an easy task, as every single monster and creature you’ll encounter has its own behavior, strengths, and weaknesses you’ll have to exploit in order to tear them into pieces.

You’ll be given access to three different skill trees to develop your character, each tree with its own unique abilities. The Warrior uses two-handed swords, axes, and war hammers to break his enemy’s defenses and inflict heavy damage, while the stealthy Ranger dual wields daggers to sneak up on his enemies for devastating backstabs — and then fights the survivors in fast-paced melee combat. The Pyromancer channels the fiery powers of the demon: hurl fireballs, light your weapon on fire, invoke flame spirits, and much more.

In combat, you’ll be able to toggle between the Warrior and Ranger stances in the blink of an eye, to adapt your tactics on the fly according to the enemies you’re facing. The rich bestiary of Bound by Flame will throw strong and varied foes at you; some of them might inflict poison, while others will use long range attacks. Even stronger enemies will try to tear you apart with powerful melee strikes.

Crafting plays a critical role in Bound by Flame. Nearly all weapons and pieces of armor are customizable, letting you improve their effectiveness while also adding beneficial bonuses that suit your fighting style. Adding a new pomel to a sword may greatly increase your damage, but it could also reduce your attack speed. Choose wisely before crafting new components to your equipment!

Your chosen companion will also be a decisive component for victory. Do you need a defensive healer, an unyielding tank, an aggressive sorcerer, or an elusive archer? Select carefully, because if you throw yourself into battle without any plan in mind and no ally to watch your back, you’re more likely to get overwhelmed by your opponents.

If you want to know more about Bound by Flame, don’t hesitate to visit our official website and the official Facebook Page. I’ll stop by from time to time to answer comments, so if you have any question, just ask!

]]>http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/04/11/bound-by-flame-new-trailer-details-combat/feed/39http://blog.us.playstation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bound.jpg3.51Project Manager, Spiders Studio393New Combat Trailer Revealed for Bound by Flame on PS4http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/04/04/new-combat-trailer-revealed-for-bound-by-flame-on-ps4/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/04/04/new-combat-trailer-revealed-for-bound-by-flame-on-ps4/#commentsFri, 04 Apr 2014 15:00:52 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=127458Hello, PlayStation.Blog readers! This is Walid, producer at Spiders Studio. I’m very proud to tell you about Spiders’ latest game, and our first RPG for PS4, Bound by Flame. We plan to launch on May 9th for PS3 and PS4.

Today, we decided we’d focus a little more on the game’s combat and show off some PS4 footage for the first time.

This video is brand new and 100% pure gameplay — nothing pre-rendered — and should give you a little taste of the combat before we debut an epic combat trailer that covers all the combat mechanics and fighting styles. You’ll catch a glimpse of all the possibilities Bound by Flame offers in combat: Stealth, crossbow, fireballs, and a two-handed axe and hammer.

In Bound by Flame, the combat system lets you instantly switch between three stances (Fighter, Ranger, and Pyromancer), allowing you to adapt to the enemy you’re facing on the fly. We also showcase some of the creatures you’ll be fighting. There’s a lot of them out there, and each has its own characteristics and tendencies in combat.

The array of weapons in Bound by Flame offers a large number of possibilities. Will you smash your foes with a hammer, slice and dice with an axe or sword, or go sneaky with double daggers and long-range weapons? Or will you unleash the power of the demon and become a fearless pyromancer?

In Bound by Flame — a gothic RPG for PS4 — the crafting system has an instrumental role. You’ll need it to advance in your journey, as it provides useful upgrades to your character, while also having a strong aesthetic aspect.

Throughout your quest, you’ll loot various materials and components hidden in chests, or from the corpses of your dead enemies. These are the basic components to craft weapons, armor, traps, ammunition, or potions that you’ll need to progress. Don’t underestimate the usefulness of crafting in Bound by Flame; some of the best pieces of equipment are crafted!

The visual customization of your hero is also very deep. Some pieces of armor have up to three slots that can be upgraded, with a direct impact on your character’s appearance. Crafting will transform your hero into a killing machine, and will make you look like a badass in the process.

Crafting Components

In Bound by Flame, the opportunities to gather materials for crafting are many. Killing monsters, looting chests and coffins, or completing quests are all good means to collect various components.

There are a lot of crafting resources, and each of them has several quality levels. Components include metal, gemstone, bones, leather, blood, Hearth dust, and more. Most of these materials can have a tainted variant, implying various new crafting attributes.

While low quality components are very common, you’ll need to gather a large amount of high quality materials to craft the best weapons and armor. Fortunately, low quality components may also be used to create higher quality materials, at the cost of quantity. For instance, three coins let you craft a piece of raw metal, and 4 raw metal pieces will let you craft a piece of refined metal.

Another source of crafting materials will come from recycling your unwanted pieces of equipment. When you find new armor with better stats, you might want to dismantle the old one, in order to get some components back.

Crafting Talents

As crafting is a key element in Bound by Flame, you’ll have the opportunity to specialize your character for it.

An entire list of talents are dedicated to enhance your efficiency in crafting. As a master in craftmanship, you consume less materials and create more products. You can even boost the amount of loot you find in chests and on corpses.

You cannot carry an unlimited amount of equipment, however. If you reach the weight limit, it affects your movement. But several skills allow the hero to push the limits of his bag capacity, letting you carry more weapons, armor, and materials. You can also enhance your recycling skills to optimize this process.

And all this work will pay off, when you proudly display your shiny new armor.

Armor and Weapon Crafting

Bound by Flame invites you to create and customize your pieces of equipment at an incredibly deep level.

Vulcan can wear 4 pieces of armor: chest, gloves, boots, and helmet. Each of them can be customized to add various bonuses according to your gameplay style.

Are you an aggressive warrior who likes to charge in the midst of battle? Opt for a pure damage boost for your weapons and physical resistance for your armor. Do you struggle a lot against enemies dealing magic damage? Increase your magic resistance!

Each of these options has a direct impact on the look of your character. Just like armor, the variety of crafting options for weapons is huge. You can customize the guard and the pommel of your blades, your war hammers, and axes. Find the one that suits you. And join the battle with the weapon and the armor you created.

Everything is at your disposal to customize your character with every detail, while giving you the edge you need to overcome the dangerous creatures roaming Vertiel.

]]>http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/03/10/bound-by-flame-on-ps4-crafting-items-to-survive/feed/28http://blog.us.playstation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bound.jpg3.39Project Manager, Spiders Studio280Bound by Flame Coming to PS3, PS4 in 2014http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/02/13/bound-by-flame-coming-to-ps3-ps4-in-2014/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/02/13/bound-by-flame-coming-to-ps3-ps4-in-2014/#commentsThu, 13 Feb 2014 17:00:11 +0000http://blog.us.playstation.com/?p=124883PS3 and PS4. Today, we chose to unveil an overview trailer to show you some of the most important features of the game.]]>

Hello, PlayStation.Blog readers! This is Walid, producer at Spiders Studio.

I’m very proud to tell you about Spiders’ latest game, and our first RPG for PS4: Bound by Flame. We’re planning to release our baby in Q2 2014 for PS3 and PS4. Today, we chose to unveil an overview trailer to show you some of the most important features of the game.

After watching this trailer, we can dig a little deeper into what this is all about!

Bound by Flame is an action-RPG set in a dark fantasy universe. In this world, evil wizards, the seven Icelords, have taken over, raising an army of undead and wiping out the living. Your character, who can be male or female, is named Vulcan. Vulcan is a mercenary and explosives expert — a very unlucky one, might I add — that gets himself possessed by a powerful fire demon. I won’t go into details on how that happens; you’ll have to play to find out yourself.

Working on Bound by Flame has been a blast. I mean, this is dark fantasy, right? Truckloads of big and ugly monsters, all sorts of magic, and some of the meanest, badass bosses you’ve ever seen.

In Bound by Flame, you better be prepared before you charge into a fight. Wait, no, scratch that. You’d better not charge into a fight at all. Sneak instead, booby trap the place, or fireball the hobblers to pieces. That’s what I’d recommend. Well, that’s how I would do it, anyway, but I guess that’s because I’m a chicken. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an infiltration game, it’s just that we’ve made the fights hard and demanding. It’s no walk in the park.

If you still insist on going hand-to-hand with your enemies, you might want to pick a massive weapon for an efficient skull bashing. I personally favor the hammer, because it’s heavy and it smashes shields like glass. Bound by Flame has this concept of breaking attacks; you can break an enemy’s attack if you have enough breaking power, or he can break yours. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that a hammer packs a lot of breaking power. You might also enjoy waving an axe around or just chopping slices out of your foes with a sword.

I said that I liked hammers, but I also like the other combat stances, and especially the two-daggers fighting style. It’s a high speed, high DPS fighting style perfectly suited for my advanced hit-and-run techniques (especially the running part).

Did I mention that you can dodge in this fighting style? If you get the timing right, you can turn your character into a blur that’s impossible to hit. The two daggers are a little less efficient against some heavier enemies though, but when I stumble on one of these guys, I just switch back to my hammer — simple and easy.

Anywho, no matter what my fighting style, I never forget to light my weapon on fire for a nice, undead BBQ.

We at Spiders put a lot of time and effort into giving you guys a challenging and fine-tuned gameplay experience. With variety in mind, we developed different fighting styles as well as an in-depth equipment upgrade and customization system; all of your equipment, from sword to boots, can be upgraded through crafting, as long as you gather enough ingredients. We really wanted you guys to feel like you could build the armor and the weapons you want to wear and use. Also, keep in mind that upgrading is not for looks only, and each of the customizations you’ll make will directly impact your characteristics and dramatically influence combat outcome.

You can expect resistance on the way — every enemy has its own specific attacks. Even the basic ones can be a hassle, some can resist physical damage while others resists magical damage, or are poisonous. Or just plain evil.

We like our monsters big and somewhat fluffy. Dark fantasy is so much fun to work with. The first thing we asked ourselves when the production began was “How can we make big monsters?” and then we went on and did some very big and very ugly ones.

We also threw some companions into the mix so you wouldn’t feel alone in the fight. Keep an eye on them so they don’t fall victim to enemy blades. You might even score some romances with some of them!

I really hope you’ll enjoy playing Bound by Flame as much as we enjoyed making it. Don’t hesitate to visit the official website or Spiders Devblog for more info, and the official Facebook page. I’ll stop by sometime to answer comments, so if you have any question, just ask!